Conquest Impulse and Aesthetic Impulse

two modes of curiosity

I recently stumbled upon a blog post about “theories of aesthetic valence,” where the author was trying to come up with theories for what makes things beautiful. As part of their motivations, the author noted that once we have a theory of “good art,” then we can use that theory to “engineer more good art.” This evoked a disgust reaction in me.

I’ve noticed recently that there can be two different impulses underlying curiosity. The first one is “I want to understand this so I can control and optimize it,” and the second one is “I love this and I want to enjoy it.” I am calling the first motivation Conquest Impulse, and the second motivation Aesthetic Impulse. I believe these impulses often overlap but they fundamentally in opposition to each other: truly loving something means surrendering your desire to control it, and conversely, the need to fix/optimize/nail down something tends to get in the way of your ability to enjoy it. I believe these impulses apply to all domains of life, but for our present purposes, we can talk about the way they drive curiosity – the time you might spend reading, writing, consuming and producing ideas.

For me, Conquest Impulse was the dominant driver of my curiosity for a long time, and for years I was barely aware of it. I was seeking rational explanations for the things I was most curious about – I wanted a robust theory of knowledge, a robust theory of the mind, a robust theory of psychological healing, and a robust theory of reality itself. For example, when I wanted to study mechanisms of change in psychotherapy, I was really driven by this need to fix suffering once and for all; and in parallel I was driven by this desire to Make My Mark on the academic world. This same desire permeated my explorations in biology, meditation, and everything else I studied.

At the same time, the Aesthetic Impulse was also operating in these explorations. I recognized that one reason I enjoyed reading a neuroscience textbook how pretty the diagrams were. But the aesthetic impulse was always, in one way or another, subservient to the impulse toward conquest. There was a problem I was trying to solve, something I was trying to fix, something I was trying to prove to myself. This left little room for play and spontaneity, which eventually led to burnout.

In the past year, I have noticed the Aesthetic Impulse permeate deeper and deeper into the various things I do, slowly overtaking the impulse to conquest. So today, reading often feels like a sacred act. I am not trying to collect more information, and I’m not trying to Figure Out the Deepest Truths. I am merely reading, as wholeheartedly as I can. These days I am also spending more time appreciating art, and appreciating both the ugly and pretty things around me. My roommates and I have this giant pile of crap that we haven’t gotten rid of in our laundry closet, and looking at it has always brought me dread, and I have not done anything about it for over a year; but in the past week, I looked at the pile a few times and actually began to appreciate it, its three-dimensional shape, the texture of an old umbrella, the brightness and volume of the big plastic bag with junk inside it. I am enjoying books more, and I’m letting them change me, I am sitting with individual sentences I find dazzling.

Given all this, I feel distaste towards the way that Conquest Impulse dominated so much of my creative and intellectual endeavors over the years. So, when I see people working on an aesthetic theory of valence, I want to tell them to STOP. Part of me feels that they are missing the point about aesthetic experience; it is something to be enjoyed and befriended, rather than something to attempt to understand and theorize about from a distance (“seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees,” et cetera). At the same time, what I also feel is mere jealousy: that they are allowing themselves to attempt to conquer this subject, while I have, for the past while, been trying to disown that desire to conquer.

And that is what makes it clear to me that I am currently in an in-between state, where, having been subject to Conquest Impulse for so long, I am now disowning it and keeping it at arm’s length, to allow the Aesthetic Impulse to thrive. Years ago, I actually read an entire neuroscience textbook front to back, and these days it’s difficult to imagine myself doing that, and yet, I somehow feel that an uptick in that energy could be helpful for me.

So, I don’t think it’s simple as “conquest impulse Bad, aesthetic impulse Good.” The very framing of “Conquest Impulse” has a mildly negative connotation to it, but “conquering” or “mastering” can be good things too. We conquered electricity, and now we have beautiful desk lamps. We conquered construction, and now we can house large numbers of people in cities, in relative comfort. Spiritual practice is, in many ways, the cultivation of “self-mastery.” The attempt to understand and optimize and control things via systematic rational methods is useful: it is, as David Chapman puts it, what keeps airplanes in the air and the electric lights on.

But it seems important to not let Conquest Impulse completely dominate the Aesthetic Impulse, which really was the case for me for a long time. The Conquest Impulse is a lot more active and order-seeking, while the Aesthetic Impulse is more receptive, and requires surrender. And it makes studying things so much more joyful! It makes everything around you look more beautiful. It is, fundamentally, a more inspired state of being. I don’t know whether I’ve struck the right balance yet, but I’m enjoying making a little home in the Aesthetic Impulse for the time being.

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

- Richard Feynman